A close look at the site on which India’s first twin urban highway tunnels are being constructed gives one a very different impression. “Are we in Mumbai? This hill simply does not look like it!” is what one tends to think.
A close look at the site on which India’s first twin urban highway tunnels are being constructed gives one a very different impression. “Are we in Mumbai? This hill simply does not look like it!” is what one tends to think.
Constructed in the heart of the country’s business capital, these twin tunnels are all set to become yet another “infrastructure marvel” by the end of this year.
With almost 70% of the construction of these tunnels over, the contractor—Madhucon Projects Ltd— has excavated a massive rock.
According to Ashok Kumar—the team leader of Consulting Engineering Services (CES)- the consultants for the project, the contractor has managed to reuse as much as 70% of the rock which generated during the digging activity.
“The total rock which we have generated so far is a whooping 5 lakh cubic metre. Our attempt is to minimise the excavated material and we are re-using maximum of this material in constructing the tunnel,” said Kumar.
With the tunnel being within a stone’s throw away from a residential area, military precision was necessary to carry out the construction.
Two senior retired defence officials, including Kumar, who was chief engineer in Military Engineering Services (MES) and Brig (Rtd) MN Khan, who was also with the armed forces engineering wing, have been heading the project from the time the excavation began in 2009. The cost of these 500-metre-long tunnels is approximately Rs60 crore.
The tunnels are a part of the 22-km-long Eastern Freeway project connecting South Mumbai with the Eastern Express Highway (EEH). “The freeway, which costs about Rs531 crore, is divided into three parts. The first part is an elevated road of about 11km from Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum up to Aanik. The second part is the Aanik Panjrapol Link Road (APLR) which takes the freeway up to Panjrapol Junction. The tunnels are a part of this stretch. The last part is Panjrapol Ghatkopar Link Road (PGLR), which connects the freeway to EEH. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) expects the entire stretch to be completed by the end of this year,” said authority spokesperson Dilip Kawathkar.
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